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  • The least fun you can have with your clothes off

    I was naked three times last night.

    Tragically, sex, alcohol and/or fun were not involved.

    This is because, over the course of the evening hours, I was puked on three times by two different people.

    The night of NoFunNakedness began around midnight, when TheHurricane came wandering into our bedroom. In and of itself, this isn’t an unusual thing, as he wanders in at some point in the night probably 3-4 times/week for a variety of mysterious reasons.

    Anyhow, we heard him paddling in, and as is often the case I jumped out of bed to gather him into my arms — with the hope of carrying him back to bed, putting him to sleep, and returning my own tired ass to bed in under 45 minutes. So I pick him up, take three steps toward his room… and he suddenly begins to hork some 50 gallons of drink yogurts, hot dogs, cheerios and God knows what else all over the both of us. You remember that scene in Jaws where Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider cut open the stomach of the tiger shark and pull out mackerel halves, a license plate from Louisiana and a bunch of other disgusting goo? This was not entirely dissimilar, if you pretend that instead of being cut open the shark just exploded all over Dreyfuss and Scheider. (It helps if you envision my 3.5 year old son as a large tiger shark, which is actually not far off the mark.)

    This was a good, solid three-minute bout of horking, so by the time he finished we were both more or less drenched in… well, you get the picture. So we both stripped down, and while TheWife took him into his room for a fresh round of PJs, I grabbed some paper towels and bathroom cleaner, and – at 12:15 in the A.M. – found myself in pukey boxer shorts, cleaning toddler spew off my bedroom floor (thank god he hit only hardwood). 20 minutes later I’d successfully cleaned off the floors, scrubbed out all associated items, pretreated and started a load of laundry, and actually run out in the 35-degree rain to my garage to toss the now beyond-nasty paper towels into the trash.

    I returned to my bedroom, and put on a fresh t-shirt. As I started looking for a pair of sleeper pants, I heard TheHurricane starting to sob a bit — so I went over to his room and made the mistake of picking him up again.

    A re-enactment of the conversation that followed:
    Me: Hey, buddy… are you still feeling yucky?
    Him: BLAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

    Hence: ten minutes later I was naked once again, scrubbing the floor, and preparing to look for outfit #3 for my evening.

    Anyhow, we took him downstairs, threw on a video and helped him settle down. Eventually, around 2am, TheWife (who had him on her lap on the couch) told me to go upstairs. She followed a couple of minutes later and put him to bed. Then we collapsed, until TheWife jumped back up again about an hour later (she said she heard him crying… I have to admit I didn’t hear a thing). I sat up for about 10 minutes, waiting to be called to action… then collapsed back into unconsciousness.

    Until 5:10, when M. Butterfly began crying. I got up and went into the twins’ bedroom — where I was immediately greeted by the now-familiar stench of babyhork. Rabbit was still sleeping soundly, so I checked out M. Butterfly, who didn’t appear to be drenched in anything but was quite awake and unwilling to be coaxed back to sleep. So: I picked her up and brought her downstairs.

    I wish I could say I’m not used to be awaked around 5am by toddlers ready to greet the day, but that’d be a lie. Given which, I did the normal thing by grabbing her milk out of the fridge and plopping her on my lap for a little early morning news (hello, Ed Harding). The unexpected part came 20 minutes later, when she suddenly turned over and – looking me full in the face – opened her mouth and went BLAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!

    So. More stripping down of me and others. More frantic cleaning of floors. And, yes, outfit #4 for the evening (I was down to jogging shorts by this point). You can imagine TheWife’s delight when she finally came downstairs at about 7am to discover that child #2 was also afflicted with the plague.

    But wait — there’s more! When I finally went upstairs at 7:30 to awaken the unusually sleepy Rabbit, I was beyond pleased to discover that she, too, was covered in vomit. Apparently she’d horked at least once (possibly twice) during the course of the night, but had managed to fall back asleep nonetheless. (Albeit in the puddles of puke, making her an extra-crunchy and aromatic addition to our morning.)

    SUMMARY
    * 3 separate occasions on which I was butt-naked last night
    * 0 total sex enjoyed by me during the aforementioned periods of butt-nakedness, because…
    * 3 separate occasions on which I was drenched in puke by two of three violently ill children
    * 3.5 total hours of sleep on my part

    Please kill me.

  • It shouldn’t bother me. I know this.

    I realize it’s not the same thing as Madonna speaking with a British accent, but I still find myself annoyed when a co-worker insists on referring to the T as “The Tube” — because she spent a week in London last month, and now apparently identifies herself as English.

  • Winter warmer

    A great, hearty recipe for cold weather days, as inspired by Real Beer and Good Eats:

    BROCCOLI ALE SOUP
    Ingredients
    * 1 bottle of good, robust ale or porter (I used Harpoon’s Winter Warmer this past weekend, for example)Winterwarmer
    * Approx. 2-3 cups broccoli crowns, chopped into bite-sized pieces
    * 2 Italian sausages, chopped into bite-sized discs
    * 1/2 cup chopped ham, canadian bacon or prosciutto
    * 4 TB chopped garlic
    * Olive Oil
    * 2 lg cans Muir Glen Diced Fire-Roasted Tomatoes (note: if you cook with tomatoes, and you’ve never used the fire-roasted… I’m about to change your world)
    * 4 cups chicken stock/broth
    * 2 cups macaroni-type dry pasta (I’m personally a big fan of cavatappi)
    * 1 Tsp nutmeg
    * Kosher salt
    * Fresh-ground pepper

    Directions
    1. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a big soup pot (medium/high heat), then toss in your chopped sausages and ham/prosciutto/whatever. Stir ’em around for about 5ish minutes, until nicely browned.

    2. Add in your chopped garlic (and probably a little more olive oil), and stir it around until lightly browned.

    3. Drain your tomatoes, then add them, your chicken stock/broth, and probably about 1/3 bottle of ale.

    4. Take a nice, long sip of your beer. If it tastes good, you’re doing the right thing. Smile, and take another sip.

    5. Heat everything until it boils, then drop it down to a nice simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the nutmeg, plus salt and pepper to suit your taste (or lack thereof).

    6. Add in your pasta and broccoli. Stir it around. You should probably pour in some more beer, too — the soup is practically a stew at this point. Then have another sip. Mmm… beer. Finish the bottle while your soup cooks, then recycle it. No, seriously.

    7. Keep stirring – and adding more salt and pepper – until the broccoli and pasta are cooked. You’ll want to taste the broth to make sure it’s got enough character… do NOT under-season! The last thing you want is a bland soup.

    8. Ladle it into a couple of bowls. Throw a little fresh parmesan over it, if you feel so inclined. I hope you thought to make some fresh garlic bread, because that goes really well with it. Open up a nice bottle of red – a barbera, for example – sit down, and enjoy.

  • Ah, 9th Grade

    Injury Report
    Al Jefferson (PF, Boston)
    Jefferson is recovering well from his appendectomy, and has been cleared for workouts and to resume a normal diet. He’s lost ten pounds in the last week and is currently at 250 according to The Boston Globe, a weight he hasn’t been at since ninth grade. Jefferson hopes to return to practice early next week and make an appearance in the Celtics’ November 22 game.

    I don’t even know what to say about this.

  • In which I learn a very important lesson

    You know how sometimes, when your wife ditches you for her second 3-day bidness trip in two weeks, and while she’s enjoying steak dinners and more steak dinners, you’re left trying to juggle the responsibilities of single-handedly feeding, clothing, changing, putting to bed (and getting up with in the middle of the night), and transporting three children under the age of four back and forth to daycare every day… and one evening, while you’re trying to change the little monsters out of their day clothes and into their PJs, and you’re just tossing the dirty clothes into a pile… and as you change a wet diaper or two, you also just kind of wad it up and toss it in the same direction, just to get it out of the way… and then later, after everyone’s gone to bed, you bring down a basket of laundry and add in that day’s dirty clothes… and then, in a moment of genius, remember to pull out a dirty diaper and actually say, “Wow, I’m glad I remembered to do that!”… and then you throw in a load of laundry, and 45 minutes later you go down to pull everything out of the washer and throw it into the dryer… and you discover that you’d forgotten to remove the other diaper from the pile?

    You know what I mean?

    Yeah, well… uh… that… uh… that generally doesn’t work out too well.

    Just so you know.

  • When does the hurting stop?

    This morning’s classic:

    “I like your ad on (job site) and I would like to work. Im flexable as far as my experience goes. I went to school for graphic design and I like to sell and to get people to buy stuff weather they need it or not. Yet I want something that I can do as a career with my experience and willingness to learn, so do you think you have anything for a person like me.”

    Her work experience includes a year at Victoria’s Secret, where her duties included “Offer bra fittings” — which seems like great training for a writer.

  • Holy…

    A friend of mine on Daisuke Matsuzaka:

    “If I’ve got to pay $51 million just to talk to you, you’d better be able to turn water into wine.”

  • But wait… there’s more!

    This one didn’t bother to send a cover letter, but the Objective section of her resume pretty much said it all:

    Objective: To obtain a position in your company. As a successful Marketing/Advertising position. To be able to show my knowledge and skills, and as to learn more about what your company is striving to achieve.

    I don’t know about you, but personally I’m always happy to see someone putting their degree in communications to good use.

  • I’m not saying…

    …but I’m saying, if you were sending a resume to a company for a writing job, would you:

    * Send a cover letter that was only two lines long, yet still manage to produce no less than six (6) typographical and/or grammatical errors in the course of those two lines?

    * Include a fragment of your creative writing efforts in which you claim that “the ringing in my ears was still blaring”..?

    * Express in a cover letter that “I’m not sure if this is a real job” — thereby casting a surreal bent on your decision to respond?

    * Point out that you once worked for an ad agency, but didn’t bother to include that on your resume because you got fired?

    * Mention that you recently completed a “lucrative education” at a local university?

    This is why I’m eating extra-strength Tylenol like Tic-Tacs.

  • Groovy

    While surfing around (I mean, while doing valuable research related to my job), I suddenly came across a piece of information that has shaken me to my very core.

    How was I unaware of the existence of this? Did you know, and just not tell me? Why would you do that?